Amidst fear of the rapid spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19, Google has revealed that it does not expect most of its staff to return to offices until January 2022.
Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google, himself has communicated to the employees that even though many of its offices across the globe have reopened and thousands of Googlers have willingly resumed work from its campuses, the Company has decided to extend its voluntary ‘return-to-office’ policy up to January 10 next year.
Post January 10, 2022, Google offices will decide on reopening as per the situation and local conditions in different locations and geographies. The employees will be given enough time / notice of about 30 days to prepare for return to office.
In July, the Company, which strongly believes that work-from-office facilitates better collaboration, had mandated that its 1,30,000 employees across the globe be fully vaccinated before returning to office. It had then postponed ‘return to office’ till October 18. Now, considering the risk of the Delta variant, it has gone ahead and extended this by another three months.
Google has also announced that October 22 and December 17 will be ‘global reset’ holidays.
Amazon has also delayed ‘return to office’ for its corporate staff till January next year. In early August, Microsoft had mandated that its employees be fully vaccinated to be allowed into the offices. In fact, the Company had said it would require proof of vaccination from its staff, vendors and guests before allowing them inside its offices.
